Wu was educated in Britain during the 1920s and came back to China after he obtained a doctor's degree in anthropology.

He continued his work in Academia Sinica as the director and researcher of the Group of Anthropology in the Institute of History and Language.

His research concentrated on somatometry, description of biological variation of ethnic minorities in China.

He collected morphological measurements and described physical characteristics of living people in different parts of China.

During the 1950s, Wu and Liu Xian invited Dong Tichen and Zhao Yiqing to Fudan University.